Did you know I played on one Super Bowl team and another that played in the conference championship? Yep — the 2008 Prague Lions made it to the prestigious Czech Super Bowl and the 2009 Dallas Diesel contended for the somewhat desirable WFL crown, and I suited up for both.
Now, if I launched into full Brian Williams mode I might add a few exploits to lend color to the story. The unexpected achievement, the critical moment in which one strove with his last ounce of courage, perhaps falling short — these are tales reserved for unreachable stars. So I perhaps could offer up that time I hit a wideout on a 40 yard post, with no defenders between him and the goal line. On the other hand, I took it myself from 5 yards out, spun to beat a linebacker but was felled a foot short of touchdown glory.
No matter that, in the first case, I undercut my receiver by a good 5 yards. The ball careened off a very surprised safety’s shoulder pad into the arms of my target. And this took place during practice. In the second instance, it was a three-on-three drill, also in practice.
Oh, and my spot on the roster in Prague and Dallas depended upon the fact that I intended to write about the experience — a series for The Prague Post and a feature piece for The Dallas Observer.
The reality hardly makes for edge-of-the-seat stuff. Yes, I was a pretend semi-professional football player in second-hand gear. To impress, say, members of the opposite sex with ‘yeah, I was a lame 40-something doing this for a story’ … well, you can just imagine.
The network star initially reported on his helicopter incident accurately. The next time he spoke about it, he again told the story of aircraft in the preceding flight being hit. Before long, however, the details blurred. Williams inserted himself into the stricken chopper.
Most of us have embellished memories at one time or another. The overwhelming majority of us limit this gift of gab to adding illustrious detail to rather meaningless pieces of life or harmlessly dressing up dismissal from a former job until it sounds like a conscious decision for all the right reasons.
Some people push this natural impulse too far. They don military fatigues and pose as “heroes” of Iraq or Afghanistan. They expand on their “credentials” until seated on a televised news show as an “expert” on serious issues like terrorism. Or, like Williams, they assume the harrowing experience of a helicopter crew flying some distance ahead.
Fooling oneself is a sad thing. It’s even more deplorable when one broadcasts the tale.
On the other hand, roughly 50 percent of all Republicans somehow believe we found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — our reason for wasting thousands of lives. For the record, there were no such weapons. Pockets of well-to-do liberal parents refused to vaccinate their children based upon false research tying inoculations to autism, a fable foisted by a former Playboy model on Oprah (make sense?). For the record, scientific scrutiny matters more than personal “belief.” How many people think the moon landings were faked?
Williams’ embellishments — lies, more accurately — are disturbing precisely because hard-bitten journalists of old scorned the limelight in favor of the search for truth. At least, that’s the legacy of guys like Walter Cronkite. But Williams, Hannity, Blitzer, 0’Reilly and their ilk are celebrities rather than humble news readers or shabbily attired researchers.
So I’m truly surprised by our apparent shock and sense of betrayal at Williams’ fictional tales. His lies caused no physical harm, as far as I know. Lies told to George W. Bush and the American people by the likes of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld — well, those caused some real damage … and many thousands of lives.
The outrage? Well, they have some powerful media protection. The apologies? Leave that to Williams.
Well, as I told the NFL scouts who traveled across the pond to speak with me after my memorable performance as quarterback of the Prague Lions …
I’m not lying. Two NFL scouts sat down with me, looking for some direction in terms of young football talent in Europe and hoping I could scribble down a few useful phone numbers. And this came immediately after my time as signal caller — albeit third string, and albeit for pre-season only — for the Super Bowl bound team.
See — the facts are there. Don’t know how you could interpret the sequence of events any other way.
